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Muriel Siebert, first woman to own a seat on Wall Street, dies at 80

By Enid NemyNew York Times

Posted:
08/25/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
08/25/2013 08:39:24 PM CDT

Muriel Siebert, who became a legend on Wall Street as the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the first woman to head one of the exchange's member firms, died Saturday in New York. She was 80.

The cause was complications of cancer, said Jane Macon, a friend and board member of Siebert's firm, the Siebert Financial Corp.

Siebert, known to all as Mickie, cultivated the same brash attitude that characterized Wall Street's most successful men. She bought her seat on the exchange in 1967, but to her immense anger, she remained the only woman admitted to membership for almost a decade.

She was a pioneer in the discount brokerage field, as she transformed Muriel Siebert & Co. (now a subsidiary of Siebert Financial) into a discount brokerage in 1975, on the first day that Big Board members were allowed to negotiate commissions.

She also was the first woman to be superintendent of banking for New York state, appointed by Gov. Hugh Carey in 1977. She served five years at a rocky time when banks were tottering and interest rates were skyrocketing.

Siebert was known, to her delight, as a scrapper who refused to acknowledge defeat. She donated millions of dollars from her brokerage and securities underwriting business to help other women get their start in business and finance.

When she was honored for her efforts in 1992, Siebert used the luncheon celebration to warn that it was still too soon for women to declare victory in the battle for equality on Wall Street.

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"Firms are doing what they have to do, legally," she said. "But women are coming into Wall Street in large numbers -- and they still are not making partner and are not getting into the positions that lead to the executive suites. There's still an old-boy network. You just have to keep fighting."

She continued fighting the old-boy network all her life. She was one of the first women, in the early 1970s, to fight to end the sexist practices then prevalent in Manhattan social clubs, spurred by an experience she had at the Union League Club. She had arrived there for a board luncheon meeting of the Sales Executive Club and was not allowed in the elevator.

"I had to go through the kitchen and walk up the back stairs," she recalled. She was so angry in the meeting that her male colleagues asked what was wrong. When the lunch was finished, they tried to take her down in the elevator with them. When she was again rebuffed, they joined her in walking down the stairs and through the kitchen.

That experience, and other similar episodes, led her to testify before government bodies about the discriminatory policies of many New York clubs. In time, women were permitted to become members. This was particularly important because of the deal-making and networking done at these clubs.

Siebert also successfully lobbied in 1987 to get a ladies' room on the seventh floor of the NYSE, near the entrance to the luncheon club she frequented. She accomplished this in her typical fashion. She warned the exchange's chairman that if a ladies' room was not on the floor by the end of the year, she would arrange for a portable toilet to be delivered. The room was installed, and women no longer had to trek down a flight of stairs.

She once explained her strategy for dealing with obstacles: "I put my head down and charge."